Enigma Quests: Escape Arcade (London)

Something a bit different in London

Built upon the detailed environments and amazing design of our traditional escape rooms, the arcade offers an all-new challenge for players of all ages, with exciting, replayable mini-games set across a huge range of themes

A few days before our visit to Enigma Quests I spotted a post on Reddit asking if escape arcades would be the next stage in the evolution of Escape Rooms. At the time, I hadn’t experienced one, so I couldn’t really say one way or the other, but as luck would have it, we decided to add in a booking to the Escape Arcade at Enigma Quests to add some variety to the three games we were already playing: World of Witchcraft and Wizardry, The Billion Pound Heist, and Inventor’s Odyssey Through Time.

So after a bit of lunch to prepare us for what was to come, we made our way back to Enigma Quests to find out just what, exactly, an escape arcade is. After securing our bits in the lockers, we made our way back down the stairs to the basement that currently houses all of the games on offer at the venue to get the low down. Once we settled on our team name, we were issued with our all important bracelet that would open games, and crucially, keep our score. (As well as being told roughly how everything works, and getting a few Health and Safety rules, of course.)  Finally, with our bracelet secured with the most responsible team member, we entered the arcade, and got started with our first task.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

In many ways, an escape arcade is very similar to an escape room, but is also fundamentally, very different. The concept here is something more akin to the Crystal Maze than a typical escape room, with a series of “Challenge Rooms” – in this case 30 – where each room has a totally different theme or objective. Enigma Quests have given the Arcade an overarching narrative (these are a series of tests for their super secret agents), but it’s loose at best. Each challenge is self contained, and players can choose which ones to go for. It’s also replayable; after all, teams only have an hour, and are only given five minutes per space, meaning at most, teams may be able to try out 12 different rooms in any given session. But in reality it’s more likely to be 10 or 11. Not only that, but like an arcade game, teams can choose to replay a game to try to beat their previous score.

Each mini game was different to the next, with a different feel to it, and the sets were of a similar quality to Enigma Quests’ escape rooms: well built, although there were varying degrees of attention to detail and maintenance within the sets. But without a narrative and with little ambient noise to block out the excited chatter of the other teams present in the arcade it is definitely not an immersive experience. But then again, it’s not really intended to be. It is intended to be almost a mad dash from challenge to challenge, where teams can either compete, or just have fun. And at that, it is an immensely successful experience – assuming you choose your challenges wisely, of course.

PUZZLES

With 30 different “rooms” to choose from, some of the challenges we encountered had the feeling of your typical escape room puzzles, but for the most part, the 10 or 11 (or so) tasks that we managed to complete in our allotted hour were not puzzles so much as they were tasks. Some of these were very physical, others relied on reaction speeds. Some definitely required outside knowledge and others still were almost like the game “Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes.”

Literally anything and everything was fair game here, with rooms that had some actual puzzles, and others that focussed on physical challenges like your ability to swing on a rope, classic style arcade games, games that used word play and riddles, pattern recognition and memory challenges, tactile tasks, and even movie trivia; there literally was something for everyone. And if there’s something that doesn’t appeal, well, your team can just skip it. But you’ll have to decide whether or not it’s something you’re interested in or not before you go in, lest you get stuck in a game that doesn’t mesh with you. In those instances, five minutes can feel like fifty.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

Teams won’t find a traditional GM in the Escape Arcade, and there are no clues. You get five minutes in whichever space you choose, and if you can’t figure it out, you can try again, but you don’t get help – it’s not really that type of game.

That said, there were some staff on hand, and when one of the missions that we chose didn’t work right, it was handled just about as perfectly as possible, by authorising our team to go into another space before the time in the one we were “in” ran out, and even adding some additional time to our bracelet to make up for the time we had lost being unable to do anything. I didn’t get the name of the staff member that did this, but the customer service was top notch.

ANYTHING ELSE

Enigma Quests’ Escape Arcade was very good fun, and an excellent choice for groups, large and small alike. But it isn’t an escape room, and those looking for a purely puzzle experience or a traditional escape room experience are likely to come away disappointed. Is this the next stage in the evolution of escape rooms? I don’t think so. But is it great as its own thing? 100%

Success / Failure

Final Rating:

Team: 4 players

Address: 86 Fetter Ln, London EC4A 1EQ

Website: https://enigmaquests.london/